Friday, August 25, 2006

By Chauncey Plover Since time immemorial, the Ivory Tower had stood amid a grove of gently swaying willow trees, its smooth, alabaster walls shimmering in the sunlight.

Then there was the other tower, the one that rose from a weed-choked lot behind Jimmy's Grocery & Pawn. This tower was constructed mostly of old tires and burlap feed sacks, and it swayed precipitously on even the most windless of days. This tower smelled of beer, and of well-chewed tobacco.

The Ivory Tower was a quiet place, redolent of leather and Darjeeling tea. A place where one might hear the sound of soft footfalls upon marble floors, the clink of chess pieces, a discussion of Etruscan burial rites.

There was, conversely, a constant ruckus in and around the other tower, usually accompanied by unintelligible hollering and the sound of breaking glass. It was not unusual for a wrestling match and demolition derby to take place there before lunch, with wet T-shirt contests in full swing by the early afternoon. In between organized events, the residents of the tower amused themselves by discharging rifles or spitting on one another. Often, they enjoyed the simple pleasures of dropping pork rinds and empty bottles of Mountain Dew from the balustrade.

One afternoon, Professor Timsdale opened a window in the Ivory Tower and politely asked his neighbors to conclude their three-day orgy of pig chasing and whiskey drinking, lest the squeals and grunts interrupt a reading that evening by the poet laureate of Belarus.

“See,” his colleagues sneered when no response was immediately forthcoming, “we told you it was pointless to try to reason with those troglodytes.”

But that was not entirely true. For the next morning, the residents of the Ivory Tower would discover that Timsdale’s entreaties had earned them a large pile of human excrement on their doormat, and a spray-painted invitation to have intercourse with themselves.

(Imagine Electric Storytime’s surprise when we received a submission from Chauncey Plover, NFL Europe’s all-time leader in blocked punts! There was never any question we would publish the promising work of this prince of special teams.)